


Blague

by ThereminVox



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 14:07:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20676641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThereminVox/pseuds/ThereminVox
Summary: “Tickling and learning were much the same thing. When you tickle yourself—ecstasy; but when anyone else tickles you—agony.”-Alan Bradley





	Blague

“**_Jerome_**. _Not now._”

The root of tongue is envenomed with only a slightly bitter hint of aggravation. With timeless dexterity, one disgruntled hand extracts the projectile wad of masticated gum from impeccably trimmed combover.

“These are salient blueprints. Mr. Wayne made his urgency very clear on this project. I can’t have any distractions as an alias.”

Vicinal to the toilworn man’s hunched form, a pallid, fresh-faced ginger boy idled behind, head saturated with a fiercer auburn shade to his hirsute mane.

At the word “alias”, the sprite, young flame furrows his brow, intuitive enough to know it was one amongst an ever expanding lexicon of his brother’s technical linguistics and not, in fact, referring to dual personality.

  
  
It was moments like these that convinced him of his twin’s estranged relation to automation. At times, more machine than man.

“So our dear old _whore _cleans up her act, sends you to study with Christ himself, and now _you _inherit the delinquent gene.” Jerome grins, unblemished, roseate lips pulling taut against smooth cheek. “Nature vs. Nurture, huh?”

Jeremiah can’t resist the nanoscopic twitch gracing that equal complexion of rose that paints his lips. Jerome’s use of the term ‘delinquent’ was, for once, germane.

  
  
A genius, his brother was, undoubtedly.   
Although not readily apparent.   
All the same, despite the compulsion to gnash teeth before admitting said genius, he could be smug about the fact that his twin’s intellectual scope was fairly limited with special regards to the stabilised reticles of language.

  
  
Which, speaking of, for all his unusual fascination, relating to the more unrefined margins of text, he wasn’t too keen on the adopted sobriquet for their mother.

“Why do you insist on calling her that?” Annoyance reflects sharply from one lens of thick frames. The strength of his eyeglass prescription was complementary to that of his work intensity, multiplied exponentially by the raw vexation encroaching upon his momentous occasion of solitude. 

  
Solitary pursuits were a venture fit for Sisyphus when your residence was, quite literally, a circus. Fortunately, with a certain charming redhead being the crew’s bread and butter, his performance time alleviated Jeremiah’s increasingly diminished pilgrimage to perpetuated seclusion.

Desperation was no less evident in the numerous layers of labyrinthine schematics scattered about the sectioned corner of personal living space that was their trailer. The nagging hiss that was his addled conscience would lecture him with every revisit of revision to those contiguous lines devising winding paths of confusion.

  
  
Much like his mind, there were hesitation marks marring every bend.   
  
Imperfect.   
  
Incomplete.   
  
A distant yet intimate siren, shrieking with the pained cries of divorced morality.  
  


“Force of habit.”

  
  
Much to Jeremiah’s discomfort, his shoulders tense to a greater extent as gloved hands seize them in a firm squeeze.

“_Term of endearment_.”

  
  
Jerome’s feverish heat of breath fans his ear with foul notes of Uncle Zach’s porridge medley. A piping hot soup consisting of dubious chunks, from only Satan knows what, of which Jeremiah had often likened to fresh vomit recycled as dive bar cuisine.

“Who doesn’t love a good pet name?”

Jeremiah’s attempt to shrug him off is futile.

For a hot minute (pun intended), Jerome sighs with a fervour akin to impending calenture.

  
  
Jeremiah pauses; swallows.   
Viridescent eyes narrow as those leathered fingers flex from grasp.

If geneticists needed identical twins for an experimental group concerning the proposed shared frequency of thought, he’d be the first to volunteer an inkling of empirical verity to the semblance of (one-sided) telepathy.

“You work too hard.”

  
  
Jeremiah could hear the frown punctuating his complaint.

  
  
“Broski can’t spare a blink to play hide-and-seek.”

Jeremiah scoffs internally.

_“All work and no play makes Mr. J a dull boy.”_

In a matter of milliseconds, Jeremiah ejects from his swivel chair, making a jarring jerk of velocity to Jerome, who catches it in time to see his pristine second half flaring at the nostrils, chin jutted in defiance.

  
  
Nimble fingers ball into fists.

_“Don’t you fucking dare.”_

Jerome whistles. 

“_Ho-ho._ Look at Potty Mouth here.” 

He’s amused by this sudden surge of ire. Tendrils of shoulder-length hair tickle his face, displaced from the brunt of chair’s assault. Lips curl to a sadistic smirk.

  
  
“Basketball Diaries got it right with the damage done by Catholic schools. They must be putting an extra spice of sin in those cafeteria lunches.”

  
  
Jeremiah begins to grow restless.

Cornered like a mouse.

  
Jerome blocks the only entrance/exit and Jeremiah wants nothing more than to sprint from the looming clutch he anticipates.

“I mean it, Jerome. Don’t come any closer.”

“Or what? You’ll tell mommy?”

Jeremiah’s lips press into a line, huffing through the nose at his mocking sad face.

“Oh, lighten up, Poindexter. After all these years, you know it’s inevitable. Or would you file a restraining order on your dearest brother because of one silly little fear.”

  
  
Jerome wags his fingers in the air, as if in preparation for surgical operation.

“Or, should I say…_ delicate sensibilities_.”

Jeremiah sears him with a smouldering glare.

“Either way, you can’t escape what’s coming.” Jerome pushes the chair aside, beginning to approach with measured steps, each smug stride of gait further inching Jeremiah into his desk.

  
  
One jolting misstep generates a force of impact resulting in a single lamp being shifted, taking refuge from table to adjoining bed, still arranged in disarray.

Per reflex and muscle memory, he can’t not put the apparatus back in its proper place. It is here where his execution deals a grievous error.

Jerome leaps in for the kill. A flurry of lank limbs waltz in the tangled heap of sheets and devices of precise measurement.

As a comet shower raining down to impress its lingering tease of touch upon the earth, Jerome’s fingers commence a loafing ascent from the heaving man’s chest beneath, pressing firm in gradual increments as the same pulse of vibration begins to quicken.

Jeremiah, pinned under, hips nestled between his brother’s thighs, burrows his head to the side with scrunched eyes. Glasses were askew. Hair, now an unkempt thatch fraying at the seams. Those same fingers, correspondent in structure and build, cling expectantly to the cool expanse of unwashed fabric.

_“Proceed, fair jester. Do your worst.”_

  
  
Vaguely quivering monotone is his defeated delivery, seasoned only by savoury aftertones of dry humour.

Jerome is possessed by an awful stretch of smile. One so wide as to give the illusion of a person who suggested scarring at the corners of a lacerated mouth.

“_Fighting the urge will only make the burn more intense.”_

Asserted with low, gravel pitch, a redundancy in the system of warnings for what horrors were coming. The once rancid stench of his vocal emissions had since begun to abate, petering out to a patronising lull of scented pine cones.

“Don’t want to be consumed by eternal flame, do you? An angel like you?”

Indeed, Jerome was the morning star fallen from grace.

  
The pressure of his rakish body is almost too much to bear.

  
Equivalent to the oppressing weight of a phantom ton, minutes before commencing session of lucid dreaming.

As soon as pressure builds, it dissipates, posthaste, with an inverted swell of climax. Jerome extends the distance, erasing proximity of peart face from the tired shadow below, still waiting.

Too little, too late.

Too… _boring_.

With a roll of 20/20 vision, he sits back on his haunches, the bulk of his nether regions compensating for axing blow to pressure.

Under more relaxed circumstance, he might have begun to consider a steep curve of insight to burgeoning sexuality.

Shocking even to him, his hallmark affinity for moral decay hadn’t fully contemplated indulging one of humanity’s most contentious vices.

This brief moment of introspection fades immediately. He ponders the thought of clemency no longer. No quarter. No mercy. Sparing no further delay, that terribly alluring, Cheshire grin is plastered back in place.

In placid hues of owl light, dithering suspense, the tepid brush of distressed leather makes a diving descent. To the deep end of sensitive nerves, fingertips double as candle wicks, setting alight the wan neck, divested of vibrant colour.

To Lila Valeska, the sight could be described as ‘freakish’. In spite of being born and bred as a performer, surrounded by a farrago of bizarre characters, the act of comedy occurring before her was one she would never quite become accustomed to.

Pale hues of moon filter as a spotlight to the curious show.

  
Shafts of radiance illuminate Jerome’s tousled locks to a mirage of inferno.

  
His face is obscured by contorted angle, nuzzling the neck of his captive like an affectionate pup.

  
  
The captive in question is helpless to violent, quaking motions.

  
Extraterrestrial sounds were being wrested from his chest as if there were beasts to be unleashed.

Jerome wraps around him like a clinging babe to bosom. Bodies intertwined; dexterous hands tickling relentless at bruising ribs; eyelashes a feathered caress upon hypersensitive flesh.

If laughs were infernal, Jerome was the exorcist.

Ill humour from Apollo thinks the bespectacled saint was beyond saving.

  
No crescendo of hue and cry could rescue him now.

  
By comic design, three-ring circuses epitomised the lungs of laughter.

Inexorably, his orchestra of cachinnations were muted to eardrums of the ordinary.   
  
To an opera of abominable hysterics, he succumbs to an incurable strain of jocosity’s contagion.

Yet, for all his surrender, the hidden feelings were indelibly obstinate in their broiling simmer.

There was no refuting the liberties of truth.

Jeremiah often fantasised about escaping this place.

Delving in perennial fountains of brown studies, keening for the sapid relish of mazes and the art of getting lost.

No trace of his screaming DNA to be found amid soundproof walls abound.

He romanticises the thought of being impossible to find.

Teeth would sooner be plucked before he ever confessed it:

  
The most enticing mystery…

_What it would be like to get lost inside his brother’s mind._

* * *

_ **A mesmerising lullaby.** _


End file.
